HSC Students Level Abuse At Author Featured On English Exam

HSC students have been levelling sickening abuse at authors featured on yesterday's English paper, according to a report by Junkee.

The disgusting behaviour has mostly been aimed at 26-year-old Ellen van Neerven, whose poem Mango appeared in the paper as part of the "discovery" theme.

Students began creating memes shortly after the exam finished mocking van Neerven - including one which compared the Indigenous writer to a monkey - and even went as far as editing her Wikipedia page to say that Mango "was used as a weapon of mass destruction" against them.

But the insults began spiralling even further out of control and van Neerven was soon being targeted directly on Twitter and Facebook in a barrage of foul-mouthed Tweets and comments.

Evelyn Araluen, a poet and PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, told Junkee that the trolls' behaviour shows "profound disrespect".

"Ultimately this whole saga demonstrates a real irresponsibility on behalf of students and the education department," she said.

"These kids felt entitled to demand Ellen's attention and incite a response for their own humour.

"They can argue about intent or claim we're pulling the race card, but even without that context this shows profound disrespect for the whole community."

It's believed that a number of the offensive posts have been reported to the NSW Department of Education and the NSW Education Standards Authority, though dozens of students are still actively encouraging the abuse online.